Imagined Connectivities: Synthesized Conceptions of Public Wi-Fi in Urban India
Open accessAbstract
India and other economies in the Global South are undergoing a proliferation in public Wi-Fi, with large-scale deployments from industry and government. In this paper, we report on a qualitative study on public Wi-Fi conceptions as held by urban Indians, textit{a priori} to connecting to a network. Our findings show that prior public Wi-Fi users and non-users alike raised a surprising range and depth of conceptions---ranging from suspicion of operators' intentions to monetize, to concerns about sexual image morphing, to fears of phone wipeouts, to aspiration---which were informed by popular media, BlueTooth cultures, and social learning. We found these conceptions of Wi-Fi networks to significantly influence adoption of public Wi-Fi. With enormous investments in public Wi-Fi initiatives, we call for network providers to address these deep conceptions among emerging users; by suggesting ways to build public awareness, better user experiences, and business model innovation.
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Language can correspond to religion, class, ethnicity, and caste in India, and many AI systems serve in English, which only 10% of Indians understand.
“• Language: Language can correspond to religion, class, ethnicity, and caste.Many AI systems serve in English, which only 10% of Indians understand [174].”
From Re-imagining Algorithmic Fairness in India and Beyond (2021) · cites this paper as [174]
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Re-imagining Algorithmic Fairness in India and Beyond
Sambasivan, N., Arnesen, E., Hutchinson, B., Doshi, T., & Prabhakaran, V. (2021) · Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency · doi:10.1145/3442188.3445896 · Cited by 228 · see citing works
“Researchers have pointed to the aspirational role played by technology in India, signifying symbolic meanings of modernity and progress via technocracy [149, 150, 176].”
BackgroundSelf-citation
- Authors
- Sambasivan, N., & Aoki, P. M.
- Affiliations
- Google (United States) (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2017-05-02
- Pages
- 5917-5928
- OpenAlex
- W2611118925
- Cited by
- 10
- References
- 53
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 2.30
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- AHRC Knowledge Exchange Hub for the Creative Economy (AH/J005150/1)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Media Technology › ICT Impact and Policies
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Technology Adoption and User Behaviour
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › ICT in Developing Communities
- Keywords
- public Wi-Fi, technology adoption, urban Indians, Global South, social learning, popular media, business model innovation, public awareness, user experience
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